Nicolás Maduro celebrates his narrow election as Venezuelan president in a vote held in April this year. Maduro's critics say he is behind recent court rulings affecting opposition media. (Luis Acosta/AFP/Getty Images.)

Venezuela’s main opposition
newspaper –
El Nacional
– has an
unusual new feature on its
website
.

The paper’s familiar two-word
banner continues to top the page, in white on a blue background, but now it
looks as if someone has stamped the nameplate with the word
“censurado”
in bright red lettering inside
a bold red rectangle.

In English, that means “censored,”
and it’s a protest by the newspaper’s publisher against a recent Venezuelan
court order that prohibits the paper from reproducing any photographs or other
images “containing violence, firearms, physical aggression, or bloody and nude
corpses.”

The court also hit the publication
with a fine equivalent to 1 per cent of the paper’s gross earnings in 2009 as
punishment for having printed a photograph in 2010 that showed a group of
cadavers piled up in the main Caracas
morgue. The picture was meant to illustrate an article about worsening
crime-related problems in the country.

Those problems are severe. The
murder rate in Venezuela
– population: almost 30 million – is currently estimated at nearly 60 homicides
for every 100,000 people, making the South American country one of the most
violent territories on earth. The corresponding figure for Canada is 1.6
homicides for every 100,000 population.

Public opinion polls consistently
identify criminality as the Number One concern for most Venezuelans.

El Nacional
has long been one of
the fiercest critics of the oil-rich country’s populist government,
now led by Nicolás Maduro, who earlier this year replaced the outspoken and
boisterous Hugo Chávez, after he succumbed to cancer following 14
years in power.

Maduro’s opponents regard the
court ruling against
El Nacional
, as
well as several other recent judicial orders affecting opposition media and
politicians, as part of an attempt by the government to subdue its critics.

Whether those charges are true or
false, there can be little doubt of Maduro’s allegiance to the late president,
who is still revered by huge numbers of Venezuelans. In recent public comments,
Maduro confessed that he sometimes repairs to the Military
History Museum
in Caracas in
order to sleep alongside Chávez’s mortal remains. According to Latin TV channel NTN24, the president also said that, every time he speaks about Chávez, a little bird appears.

“Here comes a bird crossing the
rainbow,” he is supposed to have said. “They say it’s a lie, but what blame do
I have? I talk about Chávez, and the little bird appears. Look, there’s another
one, a little playmate.”

We value respectful and thoughtful discussion. Readers are encouraged to flag comments that fail to meet the standards outlined in our
Community Code of Conduct.
For further information, including our legal guidelines, please see our full website
Terms and Conditions.